A closer look at meth's ingredients and dangers

A group of about 35 first responders, mostly firefighters, learned about the dangers of meth labs to emergency personnel earlier this month. A special class was conducted by Wayne Briley, a county environmental health officer and a chief with Redwood Empire Hazardous Incident Team May 1 in Albion. REHIT, as it's known, responds to spills or improper disposal of any material suspected to be hazardous waste, including fuel spills and methampetamine (meth) lab cleanup sites.

Making legal illegal

"If we took a field trip to [a department store with a pharmacy], we could buy everything we need to come back and make a batch [of meth]," Briley said. "This table would be covered with stuff to make it. When it's done, 95 percent will be waste and 5 percent will be product. All of that waste is very hazardous except ... the starch."

Ephedrine-containing pills are mostly composed of starch, or binder, the benign compound that gives the pill its size and shape. Pills are ground up and separated from the ephedrine using solvents. However, the starch does not dissolve and cooks have to get rid of it. Briley showed a photo of a large, deep pit, maybe 5 feet across, that had been dug with a backhoe and filled with beige-colored powder.

"They were making so much meth...," he said. "Can you imagine how many million pills it took to make that much binder?"

Briley explained that the starch often contains some hazardous chemicals from the separation process.

The nose knows

While it's often said that a meth lab can be identified by its smell, variations in components may make one lab smell distinctly different from the next. For example, since ammonia is easily available for use as a fertilizer, labs in the Sacramento valley may have a more pronounced ammonia odor.

Briley said several people were asked what a meth lab smells like. They gave a variety of answers, including rotten eggs and cat urine.

Cooks know their labs smell and will go to great lengths to cover, filter or mask the odor. One method is to contain and pump vapors into a container of absorbent material. Cat litter, cloth, wood chips and diapers are commonly used.

A deadly process

Briley described how some of the components will make a room too deadly to enter. He illustrated his point by saying that if some pure components were the size of a grain of sand, divided into five parts, one of those parts would make an entire room too hazardous to enter.

Asked how cooks survive working with such deadly chemicals, Briley said most use chemicals that are highly diluted, because the pure agent would cause lethal exposure.

"You can't make a mistake. You can't bump into one of these or smell them or touch them or open them by mistake," he said. "You just can't."

Some people, as shown in Briley's photos, don't survive being exposed to chemicals or caught in lab explosions.

"When red phosphorous cooks to 290 to 291 degrees, it becomes white phosphorus," he said, noting that some cooks have no way to monitor the temperature of their mix. White phosphorus spontaneously ignites in air at about room temperature. "Now the gas coming out of here is white phosphorous [making] fire."

Asked what temperature most cooks use to heat the mixture, Briley replied "290 or 289."

REHIT teams often find 30-gallon trash cans full of white power, which is the binder.

He said labs often have garbage, rats and feces piling up everywhere, even next to clean, empty garbage cans.

"We find 30-gallon trash cans everywhere and there's never any trash in them," he said, "because they use them for a lot of other things.

After several hours of heating the mixture, cooks must inject hydrogen chloride gas which causes the separated meth to drop to the bottom of the toxic soup. Cooks then filter the solid meth from the liquid, using everything from T-shirts to bedsheets as strainers. Another solvent is then poured over the meth to "purify" the finished product.

"So when you find a container with some kind of filter material with that [barn red] color, you'll know what it is," Briley told the class.

The cost to repair

Briley said that while the mix is cooking, it puts off a lot of hot gas, and, until recently, nobody knew where the gases went. He said a recent study by the State of Minnesota showed much of the gas is absorbed by sheetrock.

When a room's temperature rises, exposed sheetrock will release a certain amount of chemicals, regardless of how much paint has been layered over it.

"That goes on forever," he said.

Briley noted that exposed sheetrock is considered to be a highly hazardous material that must be handled by a HazMat team, transported in sealed trucks and buried in a hazardous materials landfill, such as Kettleman Hills. He said some motel chains have the recurring task of renovating rooms at great cost after they had had been used to manufacture meth. Cleanup often involves removing and disposing of everything in a room, including walls, carpet, furnishings, bedding, drapes and sometimes wall studs.

"So the state of California came up with guidelines," he said. "If you own a property and there's been a [lab], Environmental Health has to be notified. You have to have a licensed contractor come in and take samples of the wall, many tests in every room. Each test is really expensive and I'm going to order lots of them. Just the sampling is going to cost you a fortune. If they find 5 micrograms of meth in 100 square centimeters, it has to be removed. It's hazardous waste, so you can't remove it. You have to hire a licensed HazMat contractor to come in and remove it." Cleanup costs may exceed the value of the house, he added.

He warned that no area is immune to having a lab and that residents should call police the moment they sense a strong chemical smell they don't recognize.

"I'm biased, but if I were a firefighter and I go to a fire, I'd be looking for a meth lab. I don't care if it's a million-dollar house, or a barn or shed or garage."

Touch nothing

The latest known method for formulating meth involves several of the same dangerous chemicals, but doesn't require prolonged heating. Known as "cold cooking" or "shake and bake," the method can be done with a much smaller amount of pills. Since ephedrine-containing allergy and cold medicines can be purchased at pharmacies with proof of ID, the cold formula can create enough meth for a day or two.

The most typical method involves 20 to 50 ephedrine tablets, several flammable liquids and a 2-liter soda bottle. Users essentially mix the components in the bottle and shake it to generate a chemical reaction.

Without the need for a lab, users began making it in everything from car trunks to backpacks.

"It's a reaction vessel on their back," Briley said. "When they get their meth, they're not going to take it to a disposal site. They're just going to throw it down for us to find and pick up. If you open it up, you are going to lose an eye or a digit if it spills on you."

Following a discussion about the psychotic effects of meth and the inherent dangers of the industry, Briley noted that labs are comprised of things that are not typically combined by law-abiding citizens. Funnels, hoses, unusual chemicals, duct-taped fuel cans, empty cold pill blister packs, heating plates, stained coffee filters and burned containers may indicate the presence of a meth lab.

The best advice for anyone who finds these things? Get out of the area and call 911. Information about suspected labs or meth activity in Fort Bragg can be given anonymously at 961-3049.

A vast amount of information about all aspects of meth abuse, along with interactive exercises, can be found www.methproject.org/ .